


2,080

by KarmaHope



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Introspection, Karma wrote a oneshot, Melancholy, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 10:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5783122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KarmaHope/pseuds/KarmaHope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty cigarettes a pack. One pack a week. Fifty-two packs a year. Two years and counting ... she couldn't say when exactly she had begun buying them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2,080

The ashtray was his.

She had lifted it from his desk before the new Enforcers were assigned. Ginoza had caught her in the act, but said nothing. The look he gave her told her he understood – at least to an extent.

She doubted he truly understood what it was that drove her to her actions.

She hardly understood it herself.

It was ridiculous for her to be feeling this way. He had broken his promise to her, knowing full well what the consequences would be. Would it have been any different if she had told him the truth? If she had told him about the exception she had requested for him – and had been granted?

Sometimes, she wondered.

Mostly, she wondered where he was now.

She hoped that, wherever he was, he was safe.

It was a naïve wish, and yet she wished it all the same.

She couldn’t say exactly when she had begun buying the cigarettes. There had been a day, months after she thought she had moved on, when she had walked past a man in the convenience store who had smelled strongly of smoke. Of _him_.

She hadn’t meant to, but the next thing she knew she was walking out of the store with her necessities in one hand and a single pack of his favorites in the other.

For God’s sake, she hadn’t even known the man for a year. And yet …

He kept her sane, which was ironic, considering he was the one with the crime coefficient of a latent criminal.

He kept her focused, which was unbelievable, as he was –at the very least – hundreds of miles from her current case.

He kept her grounded, which was surprising, because from the very first day he had been the one who unhinged her the furthest.

Ghosts leave more of an impression on society than living people do. There is something inherently more influential and threatening about that which people cannot see or perceive. There is nothing more frightening than not knowing exactly what it is you’re afraid of.

Shogo Makishima was a ghost.

Kirito Kamui was a ghost.

The SIBYL system itself was a ghost.

Shinya Kogami was her own personal ghost, an unknown that fought the even more unknown, embodied within the stench of cigarette smoke and intertwined with the logicality that enabled her to perform her job well.

One was avoidable, to an extent. The other was not.

She avoided neither of them; rather, she embraced them both.

Each time, she swore it would be her last. Her determination then waned with each stub that burnt out, until ‘this time’ became ‘next time’ once again. And again. And again.

Twenty cigarettes a pack. One pack a week. Fifty-two packs a year. Two years ... and counting.

It had to stop sometime.

Next time.


End file.
